Aphorisms, Rules, and Heuristics
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB
1. Trust those who are greedy for money a thousand
time more than those who are greedy for credentials.
2. You can expect blowups and explosive errors in fields
where there is a penalty for simplicity.
3. Never ask your client for advice.
4. Failure-proof is achievable; failure-free is not.
5. Most mistakes get worse when you try to correct
them.
6. Never rid anyone of an illusion unless you can
replace it in his mind with another illusion.
7. Never show a risk number, even if it is right.
8. Trust those who trust you and distrust those who are
suspicious of others.
9. It is quite a predicament to be both evil and risk
averse.
10. Never hire an A student unless it is to take exams.
11. Be polite, courteous, and gentle, but ignore
comments, praise, and criticism from people you
wouldn't hire.
12. Mathematics demands an uncontrolled hunger for
abstraction, philosophy a very controlled one.
13. You can tell how poor someone feels by the number
of times he references money in his conversation.
14. What counts is not what people say about you, it is
how much energy they spend saying it.
15. Almost all those caught making a logical fallacy
interpret it as a "disagreement".
16. Never take an advice from a salesman, or any
advice that benefits the advice giver.
17. If something looks irrational —and has been so for
a long time —odds are you have a wrong definition of
rationality.
18. I never trust a man who doesn't have enemies.
19. Let us find what risks we can measure and these
are the risks we should be taking
20. Supposedly, if you are uncompromising/intolerant
with BS you lose friends. But these are very good to
lose. For you also make friends, better friends
21. A trader listened to the firm's "chief" economist's
predictions about gold, then lost a bundle. The trader
was asked to leave the firm. He then angrily asked him
boss who was firing him: "Why do you fire me alone
not the economist? He too is responsible for the loss."
The Boss: "You idiot, we are not firing you for losing
money; we are firing you for listening to the
economist."
22. If something (say, a stock) looks slightly out of line,
it is out of line. If it looks way out of line, you are
wrong in your method of evaluation.
23. Never take investment advice from someone who
has to work for a living.
24. It is easy for others, but not for you, to detect the
asymmetry between what you gain and what you give
by doing, writing or saying.
25. Being an entrepreneur is an existential, not just a
financial thing.
26. The first one who uses "but", has lost the
argument.
27. Virtue is sequence of small acts of omission. Honor
and Grandeur can be a single gutsy, momentous, and
self-sacrificial act of commission.
28. To be a person of virtue you need to be boringly
virtuous in every single small action. To be a person of
honor all you need is be honorable in a few important
things (say risk your life or career or reputation for a
just cause, or live up to your word when nobody else
has guts to do so, etc.)
29. To understand how something works, figure out
how to break it.
30. Never read a book review written by an author
whose books you wouldn't read.
31. When positive, show net, when negative, show
gross.
32. Bring the good news in trickles, the bad news in
lumps.
33. Change anchor to what did not happen rather than
to what did happen.
34. It is easier to macrobullshit than to microbullshit.
35. The problem is that academics really think that
nonacademics find them more intelligent than
themselves.
36. It takes a lot of skills to be virtuous without being
boring.
37. If your approach to mathematics is mechanical not
mystical, you're not going to go anywhere.
38. Virtue is when the income you wish to show the tax
agency equals what you wish to show your neighbor.
39. Atheists are just modern versions of religious
fundamentalists: they both take religion too literally.
40. There is no more unmistakable sign of failure than
that of a middle-aged man boasting of his successes in
college.
41. One of life's machinations is to make some people
both rich and unhappy, that is, jointly fragile and
deprived of hope.
42. You can almost certainly extract a "yes" from
someone who says "no" to you, never from someone
who says nothing.
43. High Modernity: routine in place of physical effort,
physical effort in place of mental expenditure, & mental
expenditure in place of mental clarity.
44. It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of
weakness.
45. Never trust a journalist unless she's your mother.
46. You will never know if someone is an asshole until
he becomes rich.
47. Life is about execution rather than purpose.
48. The natural benefit of a cell phone, laptop, and
other indispensable modern items is the joy one gets
finding the object after losing it. Lose your wallet full of
credit cards and you will have a chance to have a great
day.
49. The general principle of antifragility, it is much
better to do things you cannot explain than explain
things you cannot do.
50. If you are only bad-mouthed by people who prefer
your company over those of many others, only critiqued
by those who scrutinize your work, and only insulted by
persons who open your email as soon as they see it,
then you are doing the right thing.
51. When you cite some old wisdom-style quote and
add "important truth", "to remember" or "something to
live by", you are not doing so because it is good, only
because it is inapplicable. Had it been both good and
applicable you would not have had to cite it. Wisdom
that is hard to execute isn't really wisdom.
52. Used skillfully, a compliment will be much more
offensive than any disparagement.
53. The ones who refer to you repeatedly as "my
friend" are most likely to betray you.
2
54. A government stating "we will not stand idle in front
of atrocities committed by (foreign dictator) xxx" is
typically trying to mitigate the guilt for standing idle in
front of more atrocities committed by xxx.
55. It is perplexing, but amusing to observe people
getting extremely excited about things you don't care
about; it is sinister to watch them ignore things you
believe are fundamental.
56. The fact that people in countries with cold weather
tend to be harder working, richer, less relaxed, less
amicable, less tolerant of idleness, more
(over)organized and more harried than those in hotter
climates should make us wonder whether wealth is
mere indemnification, and motivation is just
overcompensation, for not having a real life.
57. If you get easily bored, it means that your BS
detector is functioning properly; if you forget (some)
things, it means that your mind knows how to filter;
and if you feel sadness, it means that you are human.
58. The good life -the vita beata - is like reading a
Russian novel: it takes 200 pages of struggling with the
characters before one can start enjoying things. Then
the agitation starts to make sense.
59. What we commonly call "success" (rewards, status,
recognition, some new metric) is a consolation prize for
those both unhappy and not good at what they do.
60. It is a great compliment for an honest person to be
mistaken for a crook by a crook.
61. The only problem with the last laugh is that the
winner has to laugh alone.
62. There is nothing more hideous than excessive
refinement (in food, dress, lifestyle, etc.)
63. The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain
"why" you did something.
64. Life is about early detection of the reversal point
beyond which belongings (say a house, country house,
car, or business) start owning you.
65. People tend to whisper when they say the truth and
raise their voice when they lie.
66. The first, and hardest, step to wisdom: avert the
standard assumption that people know what they want.
67. An enemy who becomes a friend will always be a
friend; a friend turned enemy will remain so forever.
68. People reveal much more about themselves while
lying.
69. Saying someone good at making profits but not
good at managing risk is like saying someone is a great
surgeon except for cases when the patients die.
70. People laugh out loud and broadcast their laughter
when they're worried about the statement that they
purportedly find funny. They would smile - perhaps
surreptitiously -otherwise.
71. If someone is making an effort to ignore you, he is
not ignoring you.
72. A good man is warm and respectful towards the
waiter or people of supposedly lower financial and
social condition.
73. Journalists feel contempt for those who fear them
and a deep resentment for those who don't.
74. When someone starts a sentence with the first half
containing "I", "not", and "but", the "not" should be
removed and the "but" replaced with "therefore.”
75. The only valid political system is one that can
handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it.
76. Journalists cannot grasp that what is interesting is
not necessarily important; most cannot even grasp that
what is sensational is not necessarily interesting.
77. Never buy a product that the owner of the company
that makes it doesn't use, or, in the case of, say,
medication, wouldn't contingently use.
78. Injuries done to us by others tend to be acute; the
self-inflicted ones tend to be chronic.
79. We often benefit from harm done to us by others;
almost never from self-inflicted injuries.
80. When someone writes "I dislike you but I agree
with you", I read "I dislike you because I agree with
you."
81. For a free person, the optimal - most opportunistic -
route between two points should never be the shortest
one.
82. Just as eating cow-meat doesn't turn you into a
cow, studying philosophy doesn't make you wiser.
83. I wonder how many people would seek excessive
wealth if it did not carry a measure of status with it.
84. If the professor is not capable of giving a class
without preparation, don't attend. People should only
teach what they have learned organically, through
experience and curiosity… or get another job.
85. Do not socialize with people much richer than you;
but if you do, do it in your own territory (restaurants
you can afford, wine, etc.)
86. Corollary: If you socialize with someone with a
smaller bank account than yours, you are obligated to
converse exactly as if you had the same means, eat in
the places where he eats, at no point in time show the
pictures of your vacation in Provence or anything that
hints at the differential in means.
87. Success in all endeavors is requires absence of
specific qualities. 1) To succeed in crime requires
absence of empathy, 2) To succeed in banking you
3
need absence of shame at hiding risks, 3) To succeed
in school requires absence of common sense, 4) To
succeed in economics requires absence of
understanding of probability, risk, or 2nd order effects
and about anything, 5) To succeed in journalism
requires inability to think about matters that have an
infinitesimal small chance of being relevant next
January, ...6) But to succeed in life requires a total
inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable
when you look at yourself in the mirror.
88. An economist is a mixture of 1) a businessman
without common sense, 2) a physicist without brain,
and 3) a speculator without balls.
89. A prostitute who sells her body (temporarily) is
vastly more honorable than someone who sells his
opinion for promotion or job tenure.
90. Those with brains no balls become mathematicians,
those with balls no brains join the mafia, those with no
balls no brains become economists.
And those with brains and balls become
artisans/entrepreneurs.
91. To have a great day: 1) Smile at a stranger, 2)
Surprise someone by saying something unexpectedly
nice, 3) Give some genuine attention to an elderly, 4)
Invite someone who doesn't have many friends for
coffee, 5) Humiliate an economist, publicly, or create
deep anxiety inside a Harvard professor.
92. The saying goes "those who can, do; those who
can't do, teach". But I've shown that those who can't
do shouldn't teach.
(Green lumber fallacy)
93. Mistakes detected by copy editors are not likely to
be noticed by readers, and vice versa.
94. Accept the rationality of time, never its fairness and
morality.
95. Swearing on the occasion, amid rich vocabulary, is
costly signaling that you are self-owned. But don't
squander it.
96. Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize
the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of
the decision.
97. Remove all empty words from resume,
conversation, except when they aim at courtesy.
98. I want to write books that only those who read
them claim they did.
99. People are much less interested in what you are
trying to show them than what you are trying to hide.
100. Stiglitz understands everything about economics
except for tail risks: like knowing everything about
flight safety except for crashes.
101. When people say "I am investing for the long
term", it means they are losing money.
102. Did you notice that collecting art is to hobby-
painting as watching pornography is to doing the real
thing? Only difference is status.
103. Statisticians understand the risks of roulette better
than carpenters; probabilists understand the risks of
GMOs better than biologists.
104. Real life (vita beata) is when your choices
correspond to your duties.
105. The problem with the idea of "learning from one's
mistakes" is that most of what people call mistakes
aren't mistakes.
106. Never call someone an imbecile (or fucking idiot)
unless he causes harm to others/system; there must be
a moral dimension to insults.
107. Probability is the intersection of the most rigorous
mathematics and the messiest of life.
108. We invented language to be vague, if you can sort
of see what I mean.
109. Someone said "We need more women in academic
philosophy." But we also need more men in academic
philosophy.
110. If you detect a repressed smile on the
salesperson's face, you paid too much for it.
111. Economics is about making simple things more
complicated, mathematics about making complicated
things simpler.
112. If powerful assholes don't find you "arrogant", it
means you are doing something wrong.
113. Anything people do, write, or say to enhance their
status beyond what they give others shows like a mark
on their foreheads, visible to others but not to them.
114. To insult a barbarian, use his own language: Cum
care carizas, rustice agis cum rustico, barbare loqueris
barbaro ,crasse cum crasso.
115. I was told to write medium sized books: The 2
most successful French novels in history: one is very
short (Le Petit Prince, ~80 p), other extra long (Proust's
Recherche, ~ 3200 p), following the Arcsine law.
116. Never get into a business partnership with a
retired lawyer unless he has another hobby.
117. There is this prevailing illusion that debt is a
renewable resource.
118. To say it bluntly, all the critics of my tail risk ideas
and strategies still work and have to work for a living.
119. Polemic is a lucrative form of entertainment, as
the media can employ unpaid and fiercely motivated
actors.
4
120. The rational heuristic is to avoid any market
commentary from anyone who has to work for a living.
121. I am rather fed up with those who tell me to be
nice & try to convince charlatans. The FDA didn't "try to
convince" charlatans to stop selling snake oil.
122. If a pilot crashes a plane, N=1 is not anecdote, if
he doesn't crash the plane, N=100 is anecdote.
123. France took Algeria, hoping for a country to eat
cassoulet and instead France is now eating couscous.
Inverse effects are the norm.
124. All rumors about a public figure are to be deemed
untrue until he threatens to sue.
125. In a conflict, the middle ground is least likely to be
correct.
126. The ancient Mediterranean : people changed rites
as we do w ethnic food.
127. Risk takers never complain. They do.
128. You are as good as how nice you are to people
you don't have to be nice to.
129. Intellect without balls is like a racecar without
tires.
130. The idea is to be virtuous without being boring.
131. When I die, I want the highest number of firemen,
risk takers, & other real people and the smallest
number of academics to attend my funeral
132. Multiplicative generosity- Limit your generosity to
those who, in turn, given the circumstances, would be
equally generous towards others.
133. We tend to define "rude" less by the words used
(what is said) than by the status of the recipient (to
whom it is addressed).
134. Studying neurobiology to understand humans is
like studying ink to understand literature.
135. Since its inception, academia has been grounded
in the idea that knowledge of the chemical composition
of ink will improve one's writing.
136. A golden saddle on a sick horse makes the
problem feel worse; pomp and slickness in form (TED-
style) makes absence of substance nauseating
137. Another marker for charlatans: they don't voice
opinions that can get them in trouble.
138. Increasingly, people don't become academics
because of intelligence, rather because of lower grasp
of disorder.
139. The only people who think that real world
experience doesn't matters are those who never had
real world experience.
140. Automation makes otherwise pleasant activities
turn into "work".
141. Much of the difference between what is heaven
and what is hell is branding.
142. I recently had a meal in a fancy restaurant with
complicated dishes ($125 per person), then enjoyed a
pizza afterwards (straight out of the oven), $7.95. I
wondered why the pizza isn't 20x the price of the
complicated dish, since I'd rather have the former over
the latter.
143.Contra the prevailing belief, "success" isn't being
on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all
hierarchies.
Or, even better, for those who can, not being aware of,
or not giving a f*** about hierarchy.
144. In the medical and social, domains treatment
should never be equivalent to silencing symptoms.
145. A happier world is one in which everyone realizes
that 1) it is not what you tell people, it is how you say it
that makes them feel bad, 2) it is not what you do to
them but how you make them look that gets them
angry, 3) they should be the ones putting themselves in
a specific category.
146. Any action one does with the aim of winning an
award, any award, corrupts to the core.
147. The rules you explain are less convincing that the
ones you don't explain- or have to explain.
148. When you say something you think are just saying
something, but you are largely communicating *why*
you had to say it.
149. Complaints don't deliver complaints, they mostly
reveal your weakness.
150. Envy, like thirst for revenge, is the wicked person's
version of our natural sense of injustice.
151. It takes some humanity to feel sympathy for those
less fortunate than us; but it takes honor to avoid
envying those who are much luckier.
152. A good book gets better at the second reading. A
great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading
isn't worth reading.
153. The alpha person at a gathering of "high status"
persons is often, detectably, the waiter.
154. Money corrupts those who talk (& write) about it
more than those who earn it.
155. Nitpicking is the unmistakable mark
cluelessness.
156. The main reason to go to school is to learn *how
not* to think like a professor.
157. General Principle: the solutions (on balance) need
to be simpler than the problems.
158. When you say something you think are just saying
something, but you are largely communicating why you
had to say it.)
159. If your beard is gray, produce heuristics/advice
but explain the "why". If your beard is white, skip the
why, just say what should be done.
160. Humans need to complain just as they need to
breathe. Never stop them; just manipulate them by
controlling what they complain about & supply them
with reasons to complain.
They will complain but will be thankful.
161. Erudition without bullshit, intellect without
cowardice, courage without imprudence, mathematics
without nerdiness, scholarship without academia,
intelligence without shrewdness, religiosity without
intolerance, elegance without softness, sociality without
dependence, enjoyment without addiction, and, above
all, nothing without skin in the game.
162. Thinking that all individuals pursue "selfish"
interest is equivalent to assuming that all random
variables have zero covariance.
163. Journalists reporting on journalism (such as the
NYT intrigue) is an unconscious form of onanism.
164.Your duty is to scream those truths that one should
shout but that are merely whispered.
165. My impression of Las Vegas: mostly prediabetic
men wearing shorts.
166.I feel robbed by those who make money with no
skin in the game (Rubin, Geithner,& bankers) but I
despise attacks on inequality based on envy.
167. FASTING: Every human should learn to read,
write, respect the weak, take risks in voicing disrespect
for the powerful when warranted, & fast.
168.The most important aspect of fasting is that you
feel deep undirected gratitude when you break the fast.
169. Financial inequalities are ephemeral, one crash
away from reallocation; inequalities of status &
academobureaucrat "elite" are there to stay.
170. The modern hypocrite gives the designation
"respect" to what is nothing but fear of the powerful.
171.
a- You are free in inverse proportion to the number of
of people to whom you can't say "fuck you".
b- You are honorable in proportion to the number of
people to whom you can say "fuck you" with impunity
but don't.
5
172. Authors deplete their soul when the marginal were really not interested in money they would be
contribution of a new book is smaller than that of the writing literary essays.
previous one.
191. In the days of Suetonius, 60% of prominent
173. In real life exams someone gives you an answer educators (grammarians) were slaves. Today the ratio
and you have to find the best corresponding questions. is 97.1%, and growing.
174. Welfare is also money spent on the nonproductive 192. Most can't figure out why one can like rigorous
classes (economists, academico-bureaucrats, corporate knowledge & despise academics: yet they understand
executives, policymakers empty suits). that one can like food & hate canned tuna.
175. Anyone who likes meetings should be banned 193. A writer told me "I didn't get anything done
from attending meetings. (Heuristic) today". Answer: try to do nothing. The best way to
have only good days is to not aim at getting anything
176. Under opacity, incomplete information, and partial
done.
understanding, much of what we don't understand is
labeled "irrational". Actually almost everything I've written that has
survived was written when I didn't try to get anything
177. In your prayers substitute "protect us from evil"
done.
with "protect us from those who improve things for a
salary". [Flaneur] (Convexity)
178. The bottom half has been typically screwed by the
middle class. That's the entire story of Rome.
194. Paganism is decentralized theology.
179. Silence is only informational if you can speak
skillfully.
180. A risk you run when you write a book calling
journalists BS vendors is that all your reviewers will be
BS vendors. (Reply to Bill Easterly " A risk you run
when you write a book criticizing experts is that some
of your reviewers will be experts.")
181. Formal education is credentials plus negative
knowledge so it sort of works out on balance.
182. Distributive justice isn't taking from a risk taker
who earned honorably, it is keeping his probability of
losing it very high.
183. For social mobility to work, it needs to be a two-
way highway, with a large number of pre-rich and an
almost as large one of post-rich.
184. Three types of large corporations: those about to
go bankrupt, those that are bankrupt & hide it, those
that are bankrupt and don't know it.
185. To rephrase, every human should at all times have
equality in probability (which we can control), not
equality in outcome.
186. An academic (say Krugman) cannot lose his
tenure, but a businessman, poor or rich can go
bankrupt. That is the infuriating inequality.
187. For life to be really fun, what you fear should line
up with what you desire.
188. Every asshole is an angel somewhere.
189. Every angel is an asshole somewhere.
190. I wonder why newssuckers don't realize that if
news had the slightest predictive & nonanecdotal value
journalists would be monstrously rich. And if journalists